Greatest Exterior Laborious Drive (2025): SSD to Retailer Knowledge, Video & Extra

In the event you’re working out of space for storing in your laptop computer or you have to again up your information and retailer that backlog of movies you are going to edit at some point (I’m, I swear), an exterior exhausting drive can remedy your drawback. The difficulty is, there are lots of of drive choices starting from dirt-cheap to crazy-expensive—which one is true on your wants? I’ve examined dozens, throughout working methods and with totally different use circumstances in thoughts, to seek out the perfect exterior exhausting drives for storage, backups, gaming, video enhancing, network-attached storage (NAS) gadgets, and extra.

Take a look at our different guides, together with The way to Again Up and Transfer Your Photographs Between Companies, The way to Again Up Your Digital Life, and The way to Again Up Your iPhone.

Up to date September 2025: We have added the Seagate Extremely Compact SSD, LaCie’s new rugged SSD4 and the Corsair EX400U, and we topped the brand new Samsung 990 the perfect inner SSD. We’ve additionally up to date costs and hyperlinks all through.

Greatest for Backups

For incremental backups, which we suggest, velocity is not an enormous issue. That is why the primary drive I like to recommend is that this Western Digital Components exhausting drive. I’ve been utilizing a variation of the Components desktop exhausting drive to make incremental backups of my information for greater than a decade. These drives are huge and require exterior energy, however they’re among the least expensive, most dependable drives I’ve used.

Switch speeds should not off the charts—the Components drive I examined scored 120 megabytes per second (MB/s) for sequential writes on Home windows—however once more, you need to ideally be working backups in a single day anyway, and even at these speeds the common PC backup shall be accomplished by morning. These drives use USB-C with help for USB 3, and I’ve had no drawback utilizing them with Home windows, macOS, and Linux.

Storage choices go all the best way as much as 20 terabytes. Simply test the costs; typically you will get a 10- and even 12-TB drive for not way more than the 8-terabyte model. And I’ve not seen an enormous distinction between the Components line, the WD My E-book drives, or the WD My Passport drives. The My Passport drives command a premium worth as a result of they’re smaller, and the My E-book drives have some encryption options that drive up the worth, however I discover the fundamental Components drive is adequate for most individuals.

Different Nice Backup Drives

• Seagate Enlargement 8-TB Exterior Laborious Drive for $159: Seagate is one other dependable drive maker. It by no means hurts to have extra backups, and for those who do need a number of backups, use drives from totally different manufacturers, since it can scale back the prospect that each fail concurrently.

Greatest for Moveable Backups

{Photograph}: Scott Gilbertson

Western Digital

My Passport Extremely

In the event you journey so much, you may need one thing that is simpler to hold than the Components drives, which are not the perfect in a suitcase. For backups when touring, I really like Western Digital’s My Passport sequence, particularly the brand new “Extremely” model, which makes use of a normal USB-C wire, eliminating the necessity to carry a separate cable. It isn’t the thinnest drive in the marketplace, but it surely’s lower than an inch thick and stable sufficient that I by no means apprehensive about tossing it in my bag. (Though it ought to be mentioned that it is a spinning drive, so do not actually toss it.) I additionally like that the corners are properly rounded and there aren’t any screws or anything that can catch on material in your bag.

There are a selection of colours accessible and you will get from 1 TB to six TB. I examined the 5-TB mannequin, however Western Digital claims the identical speeds no matter drive measurement. I examined it utilizing CrystalDiskMark on Home windows, AmorphousDiskMark on macOS, and KDiskMark on Linux and averaged the outcomes to provide you with 121 MB/s for learn velocity and 115 MB/s write velocity. It isn’t what you’d wish to copy photographs shortly for a shopper within the subject, however quick sufficient to run a each day backup in your resort room.

Different Moveable Backup Drives

• Western Digital Components 5-TB Moveable HDD for $130: This drive is barely thinner than our prime choose, however feels flimsier in my expertise. Speeds are tad slower as properly, however for those who’re on a finances it will prevent just a little money. Corsair is advertising this as a great way to backup your iPhone ProRes footage, and whereas it definitely works for that, efficiency is restricted by the iPhone’s USB-C interface. For optimum throughput, join it to a PC with a USB4 or Thunderbolt 4 port.

The Thunderbolt 5 Drive: When Velocity Is Every thing

{Photograph}: Scott Gilbertson

LaCie has up to date its rugged SSD line with the Rugged Pro5. This one ditches the enduring orange padding for blue, however it’s in any other case identical to the unusual LaCie padded drives on the surface. On the within, that is an amazingly quick drive. The 5 within the title is for, you guessed it, Thunderbolt 5, which regardless of being introduced seemingly endlessly in the past, has been painfully sluggish to trickle onto the market. This made testing a bit tough, however fortuitously a buddy let me borrow his brand-new MacBook Professional 14 for testing. And the outcomes have been spectacular.

LaCie claims learn/write speeds of as much as 6,700 MB/s and 5,300 MB/s, which it says are sufficient for real-time enhancing of 8K and 6K RAW footage. In testing the very best speeds, file transfers have been 5,787 MB/s learn and 5,188 MB/s write—which, whereas not fairly matching the declare, remains to be far and away the quickest drive on the web page. However uncooked speeds are simply numbers for spreadsheets; I used to be extra interested by real-world efficiency. Since I occurred to even be testing the Nikon Z6III (8/10, WIRED Recommends), which may shoot 6K ProRes RAW, I loaded an excellent little bit of footage on the Pro5 and was certainly capable of edit utilizing DaVinci Resolve Studio.

The draw back right here is the worth. At $600 for the 4-TB model (which is the minimal you’d need for working with ProRes RAW video information), it is a very dear drive. It’s nevertheless, properly well worth the cash if it is velocity you are after.

Greatest USB4 Drive

{Photograph}: Scott Gilbertson

In the event you do not but have any gadgets with Thunderbolt 5 help, this Thunderbolt 4 drive can be my advice for anybody obsessive about velocity. Corsair’s EX400U is a powerful little drive, persistently delivering speeds of round 3,800 MB/s for sequential learn and and three,550 MB/s write. Once more, that is solely going to be doable in case you have a tool that helps USB4/Thunderbolt 4 (together with current Macbooks, Dell XPS, and others—see our information to the perfect laptops for extra). Technically, simply as I used to be wrapping up this replace, Lacie’s new rugged SSD got here out which beat this drive in my exams by about 10 MB/s, however this drive is smaller, lighter, and cheaper.

I additionally like that Corsair has included a Magsafe connector on the again of the case, which makes nice possibility for backing up ProRes video footage out of your iPhone.

Greatest Funds Moveable SSD

{Photograph}: Scott Gilbertson

These Essential drives are my favourite general-purpose exterior storage drives. They’re moderately priced (for a conveyable SSD) and speedy sufficient for many makes use of. The X6 is light-weight and tiny, making it a sensible choice for working on the espresso store.

This is not a blinding-fast exhausting disk. Actually, beneath the hood, the X6 makes use of an older drive interface (Serial AT Attachment, or SATA), which was extra widespread with spinning exhausting drives. So whereas it is small and lightweight, its velocity is restricted by that older interface know-how. In my testing on Home windows and macOS, that works out to about 550 MB/s learn velocity and 208 MB/s write velocity. That is adequate for backup and use as an exterior drive, however I do not suggest it for Xbox or PlayStation use. It does work superb with the iPad Professional although.